


For The Birds

by gisho



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drunken Banter, Gen, Palaver Without Plot, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:20:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5477972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley and Aziraphale attempt to settle a very old philosophical question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The Birds

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t actually remember where this was first posted; it was the very first fanfic I put up online (although not the first I ever wrote), more than fifteen years ago. Still rather fond of it.

There was an abnormally long pause. 

"Alright," said Aziaphale with a look of confusion. "Which did come first?" 

"What?" 

"Which did come first? The chicken or the egg. It's a simple question, one would think." The angel looked slightly triumphant. 

Crowley boggled slightly at his companion. "You ... You honestly think I can answer that question." He took another swig of wine in the hopes that this would clarify things, but instead the fog that seemed to be attempting to cover his eyes merely intensified somewhat. He wondered if the wine was as good an idea as all that. "It's a bloody rhetorical question, angel. Meaning you're not 'sposed to answer it. Just to ponder its essential ... thingamajigg. Questionness? No, its ... its ..." He thought for a second more and then looked almost as triumphant as Aziraphale, if significantly more inebriatedly so. "Ineffebilaty! That's it. Its essential ineffebilaty. Thingy." 

The angel stared morosely at his cheesecake. "So it doesn't actually _mean_ anything, is what you're saying." 

"Nope. Not at all. But it's ..." Another sip of wine seemed in order. "It means great and terrible thingajigs! But you're still not supposed to actually _answer_ it. It means all those things without being answered." 

"I thought the purpose of a question was to obtain an answer from the person one is asking it of. Which in this case would seem to be me." 

Crowley sighed. "I wasn't actually expecting you to answer." He attacked the few remaining rebellious cheesecake crumbs on his own plate, but they seemed determined to elude his fork. 

"So why did you ask me if you didn't think I'd answer?" 

The room was swimming. He wanted another piece of cheesecake. He took one from Aziraphale's plate. "To ... point the question out to you. To draw an ... analathingy. Analogy." 

"Between chickens and eggs?" 

"No, between the futility of the rhetori-thingamabub question and the question that you were asking me about ... about ... about something that was a pointless as asking whether chickens or eggs came first." He rubbed his temple. Aziraphale nobly failed to notice the mysteriously shrinking cheesecake piece as Crowley abducted a second forkful. 

Instead, Aziraphale looked noble. "I'm not sure myself, actually, so it can't have been that important." 

Crowley shrugged and took another swig of wine. He'd been wrong before; the wine was actually a very good idea, it seemed. The fuzz was really rather pleasant. The day was bright and happy, the cheesecake was the most excellent cheescake he had ever tasted, Aziraphale was at his more witty and conversational and handsome. 

"But I still don't see why one can't answer the question," Aziraphale added rather reproachfully. Crowley leaned forward rather carefully. 

"Well," he attempted. "I dunno. I mean, the point is, which came first, the chicken or the egg? But you see, every chicken has to hatch from an egg, right?" 

"You could conjure one and breathe life into it," suggested Aziraphale, who took a sip of his own wine. 

"Ignoring that." 

"Well, no, not really. Wonders of modern technology. You, you take a chicken's egg cell and you ... you clone it! That's it! You clone the chicken and you bring it up in a specially created laboratory environment." He now looked insufferably smug. 

Crowley sipped the last of his wine and peered thoughtfully at the empty glass. "Ignoring all that. We're talking an ordinary, normal chicken. The kind I just had the legs off for lunch. Not a lab chicken, not a divinely-created chicken. Ordinary chicken. Right?" 

"Ordinary chicken. Right." 

"So. This - this - paradithingy of ordi, ordi, ordinariness. This garden-variety chicken - " 

"Farm-variety." 

"What?" 

"Farm-variety. Not garden. Chickens live in farms." 

"Don't you mean _on_ farms?" 

"Well, the chickens aren't at the surface of the farm, right?" 

Crowley sighed. "Let's say it's a garden. A hypothetical housewife is raising hypothetical chicken in a henhouse at the back of her garden." 

"I thought it was supposed to be an ordinary chicken." 

"An hypothingy ordi, ordinary chicken. Pecking happily for seeds, and whatnot." 

"Right." 

"Well, the point is, this chicken had to come from an egg." 

"Agreed." 

"But-" he attempted to gesticulate to emphasise his point, and nearly fell off the chair - "but _the egg had to be laid by a chicken._ " 

"Not necessarily." 

"What?" 

"Not so. It could be a mutant. Chicken egg laid by duck in bizzare farming first!" Aziraphale beamed like an expectant father. "So, you see, the question doesn't make sense." 

"Bless it all, we're discussing nor, normal chickens and eggs here." 

"Okay." 

"And the point is, every chicken has to hatch from an egg - " 

"Except the abnormal ones." 

"Right. Except those. And every egg has to be laid by a chicken - " 

"Except the abnormal ones." 

"Right. So. Except for the abnormal ones, something had to come first! Endless cycle!" 

"But you can't have that," said the angel, looking confused as he lifted the last forkful of cheesecake to his lips. "The world had to start somewhere." 

"Exactly. So the question doesn't make sense!" Crowley felt it was his turn to look smug and lean over the table at Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale, however, just looked a little hurt and lost, causing Crowley to regret his words and want to take him home and feed him chicken soup. "That's just what I was saying." 

The demon sighed. "But my point, is ... my point is, that the question doesn't make sense, and it doens't make sense for the reasons that I enunci- procla - said and not what you said." 

"So, you're saying I'm right for the wrong reasons." 

"You're right for the wrong reasons a lot of the time, angel," managed Crowley in a burst of comprehensibility. "I don't mind, though. 'Salmost endearing." 

"Endearing?" 

"Yeah. You know. Makes you seem approa- frie- nice." 

"So I'm nice, am I? Precise?" 

"Nah - not that kind - the other kind. Kind." 

"You're reapating youself." 

"I meant, the var- ty- kind of _nice_ that means _kindly._ " 

"Ah." Aziraphale's face looked like it had a gentle smile on it, but Crowley couldn't really tell what with the room going swimmy. 

"What say we head out?" he managed to say in one go. The angel nodded and produced an extravagant tip. Crowley waved vaguely at the door, absently transfigured the water in every glass in the restaurant into vodka to celebrate the evils of drink, and aimed himself toward the front desk. 

He got there with a minimum of fuss, managing even to detour around a table, and from there had a straight shot at the door. Surreptitiously he sobered himself up a tad, but only a tad - he was rather enjoying the buzz. 

The angel followed him out the door, having hurriedly paid for lunch and complimented the waiter on the excellent wine selection, catching him up half a block away. "Crowley! You could have waited." 

"C'mon. Let's go feed the ducks." 

As they tripped off into the midafternoon, Aziraphale began to laugh. 


End file.
